Archivo de la categoría: In English

Sudden death syndrome, Can it be prevented?

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berlin-madre-hijoThe sudden and unexpected loss of heart function is known as sudden death syndrome. Whilst always a tragic event, in the case of the very young it is especially devastating.

A distinction should be made between sudden death triggered by exercise, and sudden death syndrome in infants aged less than one year old. Although the two are rare, we always ask ourselves: How can this have happened to someone who was previously healthy? Could I have done something to prevent it? And in both cases, there are some prevention strategies. Sigue leyendo →

Basic Infant Cardiopulmonary Resuscitation

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3829913423_44d944f361_zMayka is painting in her studio. Suddenly, the doorbell rings: it is her neighbour, who is very nervous and scared because her son David, a 12-year-old boy who suffers from heart problems, has collapsed on the ground and she doesn’t know what to do. Mayka goes with her and after a brief assessment she begins to perform basic CPR manoeuvres on him while David’s mother calls 112…

Basic Cardiopulmonary Resuscitation (CPR) is the name given to the manoeuvres that are necessary to effectively replace a person’s breathing and blood circulation functions by ventilation (mouth-to-mouth or mouth-to-mouth-and-nose breathing) and cardiac massage respectively. These manoeuvres are intended to keep alive the person who has suffered a cardiorespiratory arrest for any reason, until more expert help comes to replace us and use other procedures to stabilize and take the patient to a hospital. Sigue leyendo →

Check to school failure

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niño ajedrezPawn to King Four. Pablo moves a piece and there’s no turning back. That’s one of the many movements with which he could have started the game. He is so concentrated that he doesn’t notice the people moving around expectantly and enjoying this exciting strategy game.

And every time he plays this sport since he was 4 years old, he is not aware of the many beneficial effects it is having on him, effects which have been already explained several times by diverse media and on which we insist again following the latest scientific discoveries. Sigue leyendo →

Minor paediatric emergencies

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vendajeMinor paediatric emergencies

As a result of a collaboration between Dr. Aida Hernández Blanco as a paediatrician in Medimar International Hospital and Mandarina Garden children’s play-centre, an issue on which parents ask for information repeatedly, and which is interesting at the same time, was discussed: minor paediatric emergencies.

Who first thought about ​​giving this talk?

It was parents who had been asking for the keys to follow in the event of some of the most common paediatric emergencies, such as a foreign body in the nose or ear, blows to the eye, or the most demanded and the one that most worries them: what to do at home to a child with a choking or a semi-choking. Sigue leyendo →

My baby will be born with a sick heart. I need some advice

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images-3Prenatal counseling is the information that parents receive when the unborn baby has a problem: which disorder it has, what can be expected when it is born, both in the short and medium term, and whether there is a solution.

This information, which will help both the father and the mother to be as prepared as possible during the pregnancy and after the childbirth, can be given by the obstetrician, the midwife, and/or the paediatrician, depending on the anomaly. Sigue leyendo →

Seeing my baby´s heart while expecting

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FIESA_ultrasound_244crThe study of the fetal heart is done by means of the fetal echocardiography, which consists in an abdominal ultrasound performed in pregnant women but centered in the baby’s heart.

Cardiac malformations are the most frequent congenital anomalies, but the question is if 100% of the cardiac diseases in the maternal uterus are detected. Although it is true that it is not possible to rule out all of them, most of the clinically significant cases can be diagnosed. Sigue leyendo →

Do not let them separate you

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images-7“Do not let them separate you” is the name of a campaign to favour the «skin to skin» contact of the newborn baby with the mother as soon as it is born, the so called Kangaroo Method.

The main message of the campaign is that the newborn should not necessarily be separated from its mother systematically. Nowadays, in fact, babies are still being separated from the mothers immediately after birth, either by routine in some hospitals, or by the inertia acquired in specific needs. Sigue leyendo →

My child has a murmur in the heart

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Boom, boom. Boom, boom. That is the sound of our heart with each beat.

Boom, boom. Boom, boom. That is what all mothers expect to hear in the 6-8 weeks of gestation, and every time that they go through a checkup during pregnancy. It is the sound of life.

And that is what we pediatricians are lucky to hear every time that we use the phonendoscope to auscultate your child, what indicates us the rhythm of his/her heart.

But, what happens when we find a murmur in the heart as well? What is that? Is it important? Why does the emergency physician tell me that my child has a murmur when the pediatrician has never told me anything about it? Sigue leyendo →